moved for leave to introduce Bill C-230, An Act to amend the Financial Administration Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts (debt forgiveness registry).
Mr. Speaker, in 2023-24, the government wrote off record amounts owed to it by corporations. In fact, the top 100 corporations had amounts written off totalling $1.8 billion. That is an average of $18 million per corporation write-off. The CRA has decided to give even less information about these write-offs today than it used to, but Conservatives are here to change this.
We are here to stand up for the average taxpayer, who works hard and files their taxes on time. Reasonable people are frustrated to know that they comply with the rules, but then in some back room under the cloak of secrecy, the government secretly writes off large debts that corporations owe it.
If passed, this bill would require the government to publicly disclose all amounts over $1 million that are written off to corporate taxpayers. After all, this is not the government's money, it is the taxpayers' money, and we are here to protect it.
I appeal to all of my hon. colleagues to support this common-sense bill.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)